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"Too journalistic to make a contribution"
Underwood , a frequent contributor to CJR, is on the tenure track at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Here at the University of Washington, I've had good support from my colleagues who like the notion of ex-journalists teaching would-be journalists and who value my efforts at media criticism. But the adjustments for an ex-journalist on the tenure track at a large university can still be difficult. For example:
* Publishing requirements This can be a major barrier for ex-journalists who find themselves judged by the amoung of "academic" publishing they've done. Although standards vary, the tenure track at many institutions is modelled on the publish-or-perish requirements traditionally imposed on faculty in the hard sciences. This means publishing in refereed journals, which means that the work is circulated to other academics who pass judgment anonymously on its scholarly contribution to knowledge in the field. For ex-journalists, the academic publishing game can present a bewildering maze of quantitative methods and social science jargon and the daunting prospect of running the gauntlet of peer judgment.
* The writing of journalism Ex-journalists are, for the most part, hired because their skills and real-world experience are valued in the training of future journalists. It would seem logical, then, that -- to keep fresh and in touch with the business -- they would be encouraged to continue to produce journalism. In fact, however, those who guard the gates of scholarly publishing are often quite hostile to what they consider the flabby generalizing of journalistic inquiry. Academics who have reviewed my work, for example, have faulted it for reading too much like "an extended feature story" and for lacking "qualitative and quantitative" analysis. I'm the first to admit that there are weaknesses in my work, but I've found it frustrating to have my writing judged as "too journalistic to make a contribution," as one academic publisher put it.
The American Society of Newspaper Editors has joined with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (the major academic journalism organization) to produce guidelines for what kind of publishing is considered acceptable for ex-journalists on the tenure track. Unfortunately, the concept that journalism should be treated as the equivalent of scholarship has been slow to find favor in academic circles.
* Freedom . . . and prudence Academics cherish academic freedom as much as journalists do freedom of the press. However, as I see it, communications scholars don't do enough with their freedom -- at least as measured by how often the criticize the media establishment. In the course of my own research, for example, I've run across few studies that take a hard look at how modern corporate management is reshaping the newspaper and the newsroom. This is probably no coincidence. F. Dennis Hale, a faculty member at Bowling Green State University, has pointed out that a comprehensive study of the impact of chain newspaper ownership on the quality of news hasn't been done. He speculates that such a study would have trouble finding funding because most sources -- media foundations, university journalism programs, and the federal government -- are beholden to newspaper conglmerates in one way or another.
At many universities, budget cuts and other financial pressures have put communications departments under great pressure to come up with private support for their programs. Sadly, this makes it even more difficult to do the sort of studies that might raise the hackles of the media powers that be. In my case, I've chosen to live with the tension of writing media criticism in publications like CJR while at the same time trying to run intern programs that depend on media support. But one can hardly blame communications faculty for focusing on the kind of research that -- with its use of the muted and densely technical language of social science -- is less likely to offend (or to be read outside academic circles).
